The Faithful Heretic

[Dr Mordrid]

Article....

A Wisconsin Icon Pursues Tough Questions

Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their work, some are lucky enough to love it, and then there’s Reid Bryson. At age 86, he’s still hard at it every day, delving into the science some say he invented.

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.
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How Little We Know

Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.
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“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

Little Ice Age? That’s what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they’d farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. What’s called “proxy evidence”—assorted clues extrapolated from marine sediment cores, pollen specimens, and tree-ring data—helps reconstruct the climate in those times before instrumental temperature records existed.

We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says it’s second-tier stuff. “Don’t talk about proxies,” he says. “We have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? It’s all written down.”

Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the mariners’ instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

What Leads, What Follows?

What is normal? Maybe continuous change is the only thing that qualifies. There’s been warming over the past 150 years and even though it’s less than one degree, Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the “greenhouse effect,” various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.

We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”
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No

[Brian Ellis]

No matter how eminent this guy is, I dispute his thoughts for two reasons.

He is right in that the concentration of water vapour is higher in the first 10 m due to evapotranspiration. He is wrong in that the amount of CO2 is not higher in the forst 10 m but is in equal proportions (ie it is homogeneously distributed) right up to the tropopause, varying from 8,000 m at the poles to 18,000 m in the ITCZ. The absorption by CO2 in the first 10 m is only 1/12000th of the absorption in the total CO2 column. Another factor that he is ignoring is that the very broad absorption spectrum of CO2 is highest (almost 100%) at the wavelength corresponding to the peak black body temperature of 292 K, while the earth is a black body radiator of ~288 K. Water vapour has a very narrow peak absorption band at a temperature way off from 288 K. (If required, I can quote the exact figures: I have them on file)

In other words, it is easy to fiddle facts to suit an argument to obfuscate the public.

If Dr Bryson is so eminent (and I don't dispute his qualifications), why hasn't he imparted his erudition and experience to the IPCC? I'm sure he would be welcomed on the panel as a scientist, but he seems to prefer a position as a naysayer. Go figure!

[Technoid]

If Dr Bryson is so eminent (and I don't dispute his qualifications), why hasn't he imparted his erudition and experience to the IPCC? I'm sure he would be welcomed on the panel as a scientist, but he seems to prefer a position as a naysayer. Go figure!

Probably because they wont have anyone besides fanatic "The evil humans did it" scientists

In the same way that the antiglobal warming groups only hires "This has nothing to do with cars, powerplants etcetc" scientists

Not forgetting that Science is now (and has almost always been) a highly political and fanatical animal

Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

Just remember that NO scientist will laugh at your "dimension string x alternal reality whatever" as long as your theory explicitly states that it will NOT violate the general or special theory of relativity

[Dr Mordrid]

If Dr Bryson is so eminent (and I don't dispute his qualifications), why hasn't he imparted his erudition and experience to the IPCC? I'm sure he would be welcomed on the panel as a scientist, but he seems to prefer a position as a naysayer. Go figure!

Who says he hasn't? Plus some people/groups don't ask if the answer isn't likely to be what they want to hear.

[Brian Ellis]

I can assure you that if he wanted, he could have been on the IPCC Scientific panel. I have been on two intergovernmental panels run on the same lines as the IPCC and I can tell you categorically that all shades of opinion are welcomed and taken into account. If consensus becomes impossible, then a minority view is published in the reports along with the majority view. This is relatively rare as every effort is made to obtain consensus. I think, if my memory serves me correctly, there were only 2 or 3 cases of a minority view being published in probably about 50 documents that I had a hand in publishing. One case, in particular, I remember because I was co-chair of the Working Group (about 15 members): there was a single member who insisted on having a contrary view expressed. This was done. There is therefore no reason for any dissenter not to become a member.

So, how do you become a member? There are three ways:
1) The IPCC could invite a government to request that a given expert be made a member. In the case of the USA, this would go through the State Department. I don't think it likely that any government would refuse such an invitation.
2) A government could request the IPCC to accept an expert of their nomination (this is how I became a member of a panel, not the IPCC though, but one on ozone depletion)
3) An individual or an organisation may request a government to participate as an individual. In this case, the individual's bona fides are examined in detail before the dossier is transmitted to the IPCC for acceptance. If the person's qualifications pass the scrutiny, based on their academic and practical record, which is usually the case, then they will become a member.

In addition, as all international meetings are public (not small committee meetings), anyone can attend as an observer without the right to speak except by invitation of the co-chair, but he could request (by a note to the co-chair) permission to speak. This is not infrequent. I think, on an average, of all the international plenary sessions I've attended, about two observers have been granted the floor for a few minutes. Although the rules are formal, they are applied quite flexibly. At committee or working group levels, the co-chairs nearly always invite one to three outsiders to make presentations. These are often high-level representatives of companies with a vested interest for or against the stated purpose of the committee, such as manufacturers of chemicals which may be banned.

I can therefore say with confidence that Dr Bryson could have made his opinion heard by the IPCC if he had wanted to, as could any renowned atmospheric scientist.

For the anecdote, on one committee I sat on, one government-nominated member was a total pain in the neck, always taking a contrary view. He caused the committee to waste enormous lengths of time trying to prove that black was white or vice versa, but he was tolerated for several years. The crunch came one day when he totally lost it, called the two co-chairs (not me!) all sorts of aspersions on their ancestry and stormed out of the meeting room. As it happened, one of the co-chairs was a director of the US EPA, and he asked the State Department to request the individual's government to withdraw his support for membership. This is the only case I know of where a member became a persona non grata for uncivilised behaviour. Subsequent work of the committee went twice as fast!

[Dr Mordrid]

What he said is true; receding glaciers are uncovering settlements that were viable communities until they were covered; the absorption of reflected energy is a vastly water vapor phenomenon and the numbers being used for clouds are at best guesses, especially in light of results published in the last week concerning cloud 'auras';

In a study published last month, scientists from the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., document for the first time that air around clouds that was previously considered clear is actually filled with particles that are neither cloud droplets nor typical dry aerosols such as dust and air pollution. Worldwide, up to 60 percent of the atmosphere labeled as cloud-free in satellite observations is actually filled with this twilight zone of in-between particles, according to the study.

"With the highly sensitive Earth-observing instruments NASA has used since 2000, we can distinguish aerosols and clouds in greater detail than ever before," said Goddard's Lorraine Remer, a co-author on the study. "But the area around clouds has given us trouble. The instruments detected something there, but it didn't match our understanding of what a cloud or an aerosol looked like. What we think we're seeing is a transitional zone where clouds are beginning to form or are dying away, and where humidity causes dry particles to absorb water and get bigger."

"The effects of this zone are not included in most computer models that estimate the impact of aerosols on climate," said lead author Ilan Koren of the Weizmann Institute "This could be one of the reasons why current measurements of this effect don't match our model estimates." The study was published April 18 in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters.

IOW the models results are whacked, have been whacked and will remain whacked until this is sorted out.

[Brian Ellis]

IOW the models results are whacked, have been whacked and will remain whacked until this is sorted out.

OK, you have an opinion, formed by reading naysayers' diatribes, as far as I can judge. Do you have sufficient knowledge, yourself, of atmospheric sciences to form your own opinion that you can argue against those who, you claim, "whack" the models. If so, please show where the sciences and mathematics have gone off the rails. If not, please stop quoting what is only hearsay evidence.

If you are so convinced of your own knowledge that the scientists are wrong, why don't you join the IPCC and show the scientists where they have gone wrong. If you wish to do this, I can put you in touch with the right people to get the State Department to put forward your nomination.

[Dr Mordrid]

Ad hominem. You can't/won't argue the reported evidence so you go after the reporter & his analysis plus your last soliloquy was more supposition than a countering of the material.

No matter: the scientists reporting this cloud effect say as much themselves but in less colorful form; "But the area around clouds has given us trouble. The instruments detected something there, but it didn't match our understanding of what a cloud or an aerosol looked like", "The effects of this zone are not included in most computer models that estimate the impact of aerosols on climate"

Ergo the models are inaccurate, or in colloquial form "whacked".

Now YOU explain how if this warming is so evil and man caused why Dr. Bryson, the father of GW, thinks his progeny are marching off a cliff based on their admittedly inadequate computer models.

It wouldn't be the first time sciences computer models have failed, as in this weeks paper on the "solar oxygen crisis" which threatens to upset the entire modeking of the suns innards and function.

I could go on and on, but my main point is that these guys have computer induced tunnel vision, not unlike the Enron MBA's.`

[TransformX]

Because Global Warming = money. Big money. Huge amounts of money.
1. Government subsidiaries, nobody would be recycling plastic without them. Most of the plastic recycling business here is run or controlled by crime families. Do you think they're THAT stupid? We pay extra 8 cents (already converted to U.S currency) for each and every plastic bottle. Those who practically bring them to be recycled get the money, not the citizens.
2. Green is the new word in advertising, people will pay more for green.
3. It's a fashion, you're either in or out, if you want to make money, follow or better - lead the next trend!
4. It's a perfect scape goat. You talk about it, you make noise, you blame your (political) opponents for it, you use it as a smoke screen to keep other things away from public focus.
And the list goes on...

Edit: When scientists discover preserved prehistoric animals inside glaciers, making leaps in their understanding of the prehistorical world, they blame global warming too? If global warming was a new concept, how the f*ck did that mommoth get into the damn glacier in the first place?
Oh, and it's called Greenland for a reason! Then again, there's a severe shortage in common sense lately. Probably because of Global Warming...

[Umfriend]

Oh, and it's called Greenland for a reason!

Which is?

[Tjalfe]

The green grass seen in summer time

[TransformX]

If Dr Bryson is so eminent (and I don't dispute his qualifications), why hasn't he imparted his erudition and experience to the IPCC? I'm sure he would be welcomed on the panel as a scientist, but he seems to prefer a position as a naysayer. Go figure!

For the anecdote, on one committee I sat on, one government-nominated member was a total pain in the neck, always taking a contrary view. He caused the committee to waste enormous lengths of time trying to prove that black was white or vice versa, but he was tolerated for several years.

See, first you ask a question and then you provide us with the answer. The dignified doctor is a scientist, he's not the kind of person to waste years in bickering with people who won't listen. Instead, he keeps researching.

[Dr Mordrid]

Oh, and it's called Greenland for a reason!

Which is?

Around 934 AD Vikings settled there because it was GREEN and they could farm there. In 1261 Greenland became part of Norway.

This continued until the 15th century when the Little Ice Age started. Greenlands glaciers increased dramatically. By the time it was in full gear most of the settlers had left or died from famine.

The LIA had 3 temperature minimums; 1650, 1770 and 1850. Note that 1850 date. That's the date the global warming crowd like to use as their baseline. Convenient way to maximize your argument

After that the conditions warmed and of course Greenlands glaciers started to recede. They have yet to recede to the point they were at when Greenland was settled by the Vikings.

Also; a recent Danish study shows the Greenland glaciers have been receding for >100 years. Hardly a recent phenomenon and more in line with coming out of the 1850 minimum.

GW-philes like to blame all of the .6 C temperature increase since 1850 on industrialization which coincidentally started at that time.

Others would say most of the temperature increase is due to the normal warming after a half-millennium of ice age. From those minimums there's hardly anywhere to go but up.

I'm with the latter.

[Technoid]

Not to mention the GW'ists that wants to rewrite history and suppress the above cause it is damaging to their cause

[Gurm]

Look, can't we find some common ground? CFC's = bad. Pollution = bad.

The problem of course is that big money and big government won't LISTEN to you unless the world is gonna end, so they HAVE to make it out to be a bigger problem than it is.